So whatever happened to that Q&A?

psychotrip

So did anything happen while I was gone? Or are we just being strung along until we forget about this?

spartaxoxo

It's unlikely that they are going to update every week. Game updates take months, not days. Since thus far I haven't seen anything surrounding U36 about this, but they claim they are still working to address the feedback they got, I'd start looking near U37.

kringled_1

Kingsindarkness wrote: »

Aardappelboom wrote: »

Maybe they decided to remove classes but aren't ready to tell us yet. 😅

Hey, remove classes, trials, the trinity and the meta for all I care.

That would stop most of the toxicity in the game IMO.

In other words, you mostly want a solo story rpg with maybe occasional coop.
I agree, that would stop toxicity, no one complains about that in a single player game. It's also not a game i would likely choose to play.

Caribou77

The best thing they could do is have a real Q & A and respond to people’s questions about U35, and even more importantly, the team’s larger/future vision of where the game is going.

It would be very much appreciated, and wouldn’t be hard to do.

Dr_Con

I see a lot of upset posters. Most who don't even post outside of this section. Here is about as telling of a response you'll get to this question

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7713831/#Comment_7713831

1. I don't think they'll do a Q&A for u35.
2. if they do a Q&A it should be internal and it will be filtered through community managers.
3. Treat Kevin and other zos staff nicely please, criticize decisions not people.
4. We are here to discuss, not give speeches. Stop posting paragraphs and paragraphs of criticism, try to shorten it to easily digestible bites. use references if you must to other long posts, but enough with using 5 pages per post in a discussion topic if you want to be heard.

Ksariyu

Dr_Con wrote: »

I see a lot of upset posters. Most who don't even post outside of this section. Here is about as telling of a response you'll get to this question

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7713831/#Comment_7713831

1. I don't think they'll do a Q&A for u35.
2. if they do a Q&A it should be internal and it will be filtered through community managers.
3. Treat Kevin and other zos staff nicely please, criticize decisions not people.
4. We are here to discuss, not give speeches. Stop posting paragraphs and paragraphs of criticism, try to shorten it to easily digestible bites. use references if you must to other long posts, but enough with using 5 pages per post in a discussion topic if you want to be heard.

I agree about being kind to Kevin and friends as they aren't really the people we're having a problem with right now. However, they've stated repeatedly now that they are planning to do something to address feedback about U35, which now over a month later we still have not gotten. As a consumer, you can choose to hold the makers of a product accountable for things they say they'll do, or you can choose to forget about it. The latter choice is what they want, but it does nothing to help the consumer.
This is also the second time I personally have seen you complain about post length; this is not Twitter. The point of a forum is to have long-form discussions, to articulate and express opinions fully, often with background information when required. The type of "easily digestible bites" most people have grown accustomed to lately are often misconstrued, discarding nuance and leaving a polarizing and incomplete version of what might otherwise have been a fully developed idea worth considering. Note the infamous posts from Rich. I think many people would prefer a complete statement from him rather than just a snarky blurb.

Destai

Dr_Con wrote: »

I see a lot of upset posters. Most who don't even post outside of this section. Here is about as telling of a response you'll get to this question

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7713831/#Comment_7713831

1. I don't think they'll do a Q&A for u35.
2. if they do a Q&A it should be internal and it will be filtered through community managers.
3. Treat Kevin and other zos staff nicely please, criticize decisions not people.
4. We are here to discuss, not give speeches. Stop posting paragraphs and paragraphs of criticism, try to shorten it to easily digestible bites. use references if you must to other long posts, but enough with using 5 pages per post in a discussion topic if you want to be heard.

They can respect us enough to just say something. Myself and a few others have asked very direct questions and personally I am a little irritated having to chase down answers to that. I find it hard to believe @zos_kevin hasn’t seen our questions. Hard not to feel like that’s being overlooked by him, along with the other concerns we’ve laid out. The whole problem with these guys is the lack of follow up. We get one response, we ask questions within hours of said response, and then ZOS CMs say nothing for months.

Ghaleb

Ksariyu wrote: »

[…]. However, they've stated repeatedly now that they are planning to do something to address feedback about U35, which now over a month later we still have not gotten. […]

Not to nitpick. But U35 was brought to PC on August 22nd and was announced ~6 weeks prior to that with questions on the vision, efc, airing very early during the PTS.

So in the best case we meanwhile talk about 2 months and approaching 2,5 months fast. In the worst case we already talk about 3 months aka a quarter of the year for ZoS to come up with replies to issues we see / questions we have on a vision, they repeatedly have stated is very much there and alive.

2-3 months and still a “we’re working on some curated questions”…

vgabor

well, I guess that Q&A just got infinitely queued like you do in the dungeon finder

Elsonso

Magic 8 Ball said "Without a doubt" so I am holding them to that.

peacenote

VaranisArano wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

The fact that they are still working on addressing player feedback about U35 two months after the fact is likely because of one of two things: Either there's internal disagreement or debate about what to say, or else it's just not important enough to get done in a timely fashion.

Or they want to be able to point to specific changes they have made in light of the feedback

I know I'm hoping to see more of the targeted content nerfs we saw in updates past when ZOS adjusted vet DLC dungeons and trials for accessibility.

We'd see lists of tweaks to specific encounters and boss mechanics, not the flat 10% health reduction we got with U35.

So I guess if that's something they're waiting for to announce, i.e. using the Live data to more accurately target problematic areas for accessibility,

spartaxoxo wrote: »

peacenote wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Ishtarknows wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

FluffyBird wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I found the AWA to mostly be pretty thorough. They explained what they were changing, how it would work, and why they refused to allow character specific achievements.

Yes, the focus was on performance. Which is interesting, because there's not been a word about performance improvements in the four updates since.

I wonder why that is?

They just needed some database space for more sets and motifs (jk)

They actually did say that they needed to remove our achievements to "make room for the card game and other systems."

I hadn't read this, or I'd managed to blank it out, but this makes the card game feature even worse in my book. My characters lost their own achievements for that?!

AWA is bad, but it's at its worst when you need a skill point and have to trawl zone maps individually instead of just skimming down their achievements to find a zone they're missing skyshards in.

They never said the card game in particular. It was moreso a general future proofing for new content, as they wouldn't have been able to add new content and new achievements and ensure the game was performance without this change. Keeping the game performant is also why they couldn't implement any of the individual character suggestions.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Lately, we have been working on ways to trim the data footprint while still recording all the monsters you slay, items you hoard and achievements you ding. By consolidating achievements, we can retain and improve the way the game handles this type of data and the overall experience. With the database’s overall footprint reduced, it will more performant across the board, which may manifest itself in faster load screens and improved performance on other database-heavy operations. Most importantly, however, this change helps keep the game performant as we continue to add new content and achievements in the future.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/598865/account-wide-achievements-q-a

You're right, except.... the card game came with a boatload of new achievements. So, from the perspective of the achievement database size, any new feature that comes with achievements is at least partially to blame for what we lost with the database pruning. If they had rolled out a card game without any achievements, then it could be considered blameless in the AwA debacle.

While that's true, without knowing the exact details we also can't know if they could have done High Isle at all without Tales. Or Firesong. Or any other content from the moment that update hit. So it feels to me like Tales is catching a stray because some people don't like it's addition, when it's impossible to single out any update or feature post AWA.

Yeah, realistically, any new feature is going to add achievements (along with every new dungeon and story.)

If I counted right, Tales of Tribute has 53 achievements right now.

That looks bad, but Graven Deep has 23 achievements and Earthen Root Enclave has 22.

So when ZOS is looking at it, it's the difference between each dungeon DLC adding 40+ achievements per character or 40+ achievements per account.

If Tales of Tribute was the straw that broke the camel's back, well, then changing it only would've pushed back the inevitable for a couple updates.

Actually that's true and I'm not against ToT specifically. I feel that getting rid of old achievements to add ANY new ones is salt in the wound. Especially character specific ones like motifs.

It would have been so much better if they had implemented an explorer's log, a dungeon/trial log, and a motif knowledge log, and moved the achievement data to those separate databases, and just ditched large swaths of achievement types altogether. Re-think the whole thing. There are so many achievements that actually aren't achievements... they are, in fact, "duh" moments. Don't make it an achievement every time I get a motif. Make it an achievement when I get a whole set, if that. Redirect the Master Crafter achievement to look at my motif log. Stuff like that.

Anyway, imo slashing the achievement database in general while continuing with the formulaic way achievements are added to the game with each new chunk of content makes AwA feel shoehorned in and badly planned without consideration for client experience.

And I'm betting there is a lot of that feeling for u35 too. Just the rug pulled out with the reasons not adding up because many questions, suggestions, etc were just ignored. Which is why I think they really need to address people waiting for the promised communications on u35. Each day that goes by overall trust goes down.

Jaraal

peacenote wrote: »

And I'm betting there is a lot of that feeling for u35 too. Just the rug pulled out with the reasons not adding up because many questions, suggestions, etc were just ignored. Which is why I think they really need to address people waiting for the promised communications on u35. Each day that goes by overall trust goes down.

It's interesting to note that, according to the Dev Tracker, there were 100 forum posts by devs in the month of June. Then the Update 35 Combat Preview was posted on July 6th. Since then, dev communication dropped by half over the next three months. And so far, October shows only 26 dev posts to date with just eight days left in the month.

So it seems that we are regressing from that promised uptick in communication and involvement with the community. I wonder why that is?

KlauthWarthog

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Just wanted to update a brief update here. We are still working on something to address sentiment around U35 combat changes. That is the current plan right now. Once we have something more specific to share, we'll update accordingly.

Well, I am not going to pretend that I can speak for anybody else here, but this continued beating around the bush on this subject is working wonders to spread my very negative sentiments around U35 to everything else in the game.

Suddwrath

At this rate the Q&A will be released by the time the game finally comes out of beta.

zaria

ZoS is very happy in how Remind Silent preform as as an contact person.

SpacemanSpiff1

I'm sure it'll be happening soon.

zaria wrote: »

ZoS is very happy in how Remind Silent preform as as an contact person.

She's got great candles.

Blinx

this late in the cycle, I'd say there's a guaranteed chance it's not going to happen...

SammyKhajit

Remains Silent gives out good loot! This one has been able to give his new characters starter kits of Sithis gear!

Please ZOS this procrastination is not great.

MetallicMonk

Great Q&A! All my questions were answered and I feel very informed!

AlexanderDeLarge

Dr_Con wrote: »

• if they do a Q&A it should be internal and it will be filtered through community managers.
• We are here to discuss, not give speeches. Stop posting paragraphs and paragraphs of criticism, try to shorten it to easily digestible bites. use references if you must to other long posts, but enough with using 5 pages per post in a discussion topic if you want to be heard.

The last thing we need is internal and filtered anything. In my view the biggest shortcoming ZOS has right now is a lack of transparency. The pinned overland thread with 4000+ posts and a single 'we hear you' comment from ZOS illustrates that sentiment perfectly. Just took a look at the dev tracker and I'm not impressed. Beyond stickies and very short replies to random topics there's almost no engagement with the community beyond moderation.

Also as @Ksariyu mentioned this is a discussion forum. It's meant to discuss things and what's being discussed here doesn't fit 160 characters or less. Most of the feedback I see here is pretty concise and reasonable so I'm not sure where this is coming from.

FluffWit

I think they hate there own forums which is unstandable- we can be toxic jerks. Thing is without them where's the feedback gonna come from? They canned the class reps years go. Theres no official discord as far as I know. I see no devs responding on the games reddit.

Amd the few people who bother helping them by giving pts feedback must be feed up too.

I've been playing Falliut 76. Same company. Almost the complete opposite when it comes to community engagement. So I ditched the eso sub and decided to sub to that for at least next month.

Jaraal

FluffWit wrote: »

I think they hate there own forums which is unstandable- we can be toxic jerks..

Well, when the management starts out by calling us scared, tiresome, mistrustful, and disappointing consumers, how are we expected to respond?

It’s a two way street.

joergino

FluffWit wrote: »

I think they hate there own forums which is unstandable- we can be toxic jerks. Thing is without them where's the feedback gonna come from? They canned the class reps years go. Theres no official discord as far as I know. I see no devs responding on the games reddit.

Amd the few people who bother helping them by giving pts feedback must be feed up too.

I've been playing Falliut 76. Same company. Almost the complete opposite when it comes to community engagement. So I ditched the eso sub and decided to sub to that for at least next month.

Different company, same owner

renne

Lmao still nothing? It'll eventually be like what the PS5 trophies debacle was like. Six months of Kevin promising answers/updates and then eventually confirmed quite literally in a throwaway comment by Rich Lambert in a livestream, and then another three months before anything actually happened.

Looking forward to the U35 Q&A in May next year.

Kingsindarkness

kringled_1 wrote: »

Kingsindarkness wrote: »

Aardappelboom wrote: »

Maybe they decided to remove classes but aren't ready to tell us yet. 😅

Hey, remove classes, trials, the trinity and the meta for all I care.

That would stop most of the toxicity in the game IMO.

In other words, you mostly want a solo story rpg with maybe occasional coop.
I agree, that would stop toxicity, no one complains about that in a single-player game. It's also not a game i would likely choose to play.

Not at all, I want a Cooperative story RPG that isn't gated by a few dozen hypercompetitive grognards that believe they can't have fun unless they ruin everyone else's game...

and let's face it stands most people who play ESO views Raiding like this...
(And for good or bad..this reputation is self inflicted.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJV6WFFYpI&t=18s

ZoS has already found out that having most of the game like a Coop Skyrim is a winner with record profits, which is why 98% of the game is already like this. And yes it would stop Toxicity and while a handful of players would leave (because let's face it who actually raids or PVP's anymore?) the rest of the community would flourish and ESO would be hailed as having one of the least toxic communities of all, not to mention the time and money saved on producing content that few even see much less play.

it's a win-win.

MetallicMonk

Kingsindarkness wrote: »

Not at all, I want a Cooperative story RPG that isn't gated by a few dozen hypercompetitive grognards that believe they can't have fun unless they ruin everyone else's game...

and let's face it stands most people who play ESO views Raiding like this...
(And for good or bad..this reputation is self inflicted.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJV6WFFYpI&t=18s

ZoS has already found out that having most of the game like a Coop Skyrim is a winner with record profits, which is why 98% of the game is already like this. And yes it would stop Toxicity and while a handful of players would leave (because let's face it who actually raids or PVP's anymore?) the rest of the community would flourish and ESO would be hailed as having one of the least toxic communities of all, not to mention the time and money saved on producing content that few even see much less play.

it's a win-win.

You sound like a complete genius. I agree, zos has it all figured out that's why their game is in such a healthy state all around and the attitude revolving around it is nothing but positive.

Honestly they really should have figured it out sooner, just completely remove any worthwhile content who needs it.

spartaxoxo

Kingsindarkness wrote: »

it's a win-win.

There's a lot of us who play this game because it offers a variety of content. I doubt this game would hold my interest long if it was ONLY the quests. I enjoy the dungeons, I enjoy vet content, and I'm not alone in that.

Kingsindarkness

MetallicMonk wrote: »

Kingsindarkness wrote: »

Not at all, I want a Cooperative story RPG that isn't gated by a few dozen hypercompetitive grognards that believe they can't have fun unless they ruin everyone else's game...

and let's face it stands most people who play ESO views Raiding like this...
(And for good or bad..this reputation is self inflicted.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJV6WFFYpI&t=18s

ZoS has already found out that having most of the game like a Coop Skyrim is a winner with record profits, which is why 98% of the game is already like this. And yes it would stop Toxicity and while a handful of players would leave (because let's face it who actually raids or PVP's anymore?) the rest of the community would flourish and ESO would be hailed as having one of the least toxic communities of all, not to mention the time and money saved on producing content that few even see much less play.

it's a win-win.

just completely remove any worthwhile content who needs it.

Patronizing insults aside....

If it's so "Worthwhile" why is it that less than 3% of the community even bothers with it? I mean there is absolutely no reason to do it other than to ride the raid carousel...do you honestly believe this game would even have raiding if it wasn't a beloved pastime of the developers?

I don't think that a healthy in-game pursuit would have a defunct project to get more interest in it.

If the content is fun and worthwhile people will step on each other to play it...ESO has a lot of players, and the content they want to play overwhelmingly is the Solo/Co-op content. You can hate that, and talk about not playing... but ESO is a Solo/Co-op centric game like WoW is a Raid-centric game.

I just don't see the situation changing....I don't think that is such a radical observation.

Wolfkeks

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Kingsindarkness wrote: »

it's a win-win.

There's a lot of us who play this game because it offers a variety of content. I doubt this game would hold my interest long if it was ONLY the quests. I enjoy the dungeons, I enjoy vet content, and I'm not alone in that.

This^. While I enjoy the quests I wouldn't have played this MMORPG for so long if it wasn't for the other options too. I can do a vet raid with the guild, PvP with friends until the server drops us or do Shada's Tears (again) in Craglorn with a new player. One of this game's strength is that is has something for everyone. ^^

VaranisArano

We're getting rather far afield from the Q&A topic.

However, this recent interview from Rich Lambert seems rather relevant to the question of "worthwhile" content. He discusses the ways in which the Devs try to provide additional content for the various parts of the playerbase so players stay engaged once they've polished off the 30-40 hours of quest content in a Chapter: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/building-an-mmo-for-solo-players-in-the-elder-scrolls-online-1

An excerpt:
"The balance the team needs to strike is making sure ESO offers something for everyone, whether it's a solo Elder Scrolls fan looking for an alternative to yet another Skyrim playthrough or a hardened MMO fan diving deeper and deeper into endgame content. Lambert says there is plenty for the former, and for the latter there's everything from bosses that require multiple players to take them down, to four-player dungeons, to 'Trials' and raids that support up to 12 people.

"The hardest part in all of that is trying to figure out the roadmap of things," he adds. "It's a persistent world so players are always in there; what other alternate activities that they're doing? The story only takes you so far. We launch a chapter that has 30 to 40 hours of content in it and hardcore players will polish that off in a week and they're like 'Give us more'. We can't build content fast enough. We have to have all those supporting systems on top."

To inform that roadmap, Lambert says ZeniMax has learned how to break down its player base into segmented cohorts when analysing their playing habits. For example, the team is able to compare the behaviour of players who predominantly spend time on PvP, solo PvE or group PvE activities. They then ensure there is new content for that group with every major update – of which there are four every year, amounting to about 60 hours of new content in total. Lambert previously admitted to us there has been some crunch involved in the past, but says processes have been improved and management expectations have been reined in to the point where this is less of an issue than it once was."


So, whether you think that content is worthwhile or not, ZOS does, and they create it to keep a wide variety of players engaged with ESO.